White House: No decision yet about site in Homestead as child border crossings surge
The Biden administration says it has not made a decision on whether the Homestead detention center for migrant children will reopen as the number of kids crossing the border alone continues to surge.
The facility’s status has been in limbo as authorities grapple with how to house the hundreds of unaccompanied minors arriving at the border each day.
Two Department of Homeland Security officials told the Miami Herald in February that authorities planned to reopen the site. But Democrats in Congress and immigration advocates have been clamoring for the center to remain closed.
“There hasn’t been a decision,” said White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, deferring all questions to the Department of Health and Human Services,
which oversees migrant facilities for unaccompanied minors. “I don’t have anything more about the president’s personal point of view about specific facilities.”
HHS did not respond to an inquiry from the Miami Herald on Wednesday.
In mid-2019, dozens of politicians used the Homestead detention center as a campaign stop to highlight immigration issues under then-President Donald Trump.
Vice President Kamala Harris, who at the time was a presidential hopeful, was one of them. Now, the surge of migrants showing up to the U.S. southern border amid a global pandemic has become one of the Biden administration’s first major crises.
For some, what happens at the Homestead detention center will be a litmus test for how President Joe Biden intends to handle the detention of undocumented immigrants. During the campaign, he vowed to end the practice of holding those who arrive without papers in privately run facilities.
“During their campaign, Democrats made such a strong case for immigration and children at the border that they should have had a plan. And I don’t see it,” said Eduardo Gamarra, a Florida International University political analyst. “They appear to be very slow in terms of responding to a humanitarian crisis of massive proportions that is only going to get worse.
“They came in and basically discovered a reality that was worse than what they expected and now they have no way to respond very quickly because of lack of infrastructure. And now the paradox is that they have to use what they found until they define a way forward.”
As of Sunday, the U.S. government had 4,276 unaccompanied migrant children in custody.
Monique O. Madan: 305-376-2108, @MoniqueOMadan